Take your passport and experience time-travel when you see The Australian Ballet’s latest production of Romeo and Juliet, choreographed by Graeme Murphy.

It starts in fair Verona with a sword fight and then travels the world ~ to an ice palace, a Buddhist temple for the wedding scene, moving on to an Indian bazaar and a finale in the desert with a bed of yellow skulls, where it is impossible for love to survive.

“The audience is not stuck in Verona but will travel the world … they will enjoy the adventure,” he said.

“I wanted to celebrate the timelessness of the story, because it belongs to all times and all societies.”

A Graeme Murphy ballet will not play it safe and his bravery to reinvent classic ballets with modern twists, results in the creation of work that is adventurous and challenges convention as well as the audience.

Murphy tackles Romeo and Juliet, retaining the bones of Shakespeare’s tragic tale and much of the Prokofiev score, but bravely shed any concrete allusions to time and place. {The Age}

Lavish set design and and resplendent Akira Isogawa costumes, take us around the world.

The Act 11 curtain rises on a gorgeous Indian market scene.

{Images: Madeleine Eastoe and Kevin Jackson in Romeo and Juliet, 2011. Courtesy of the Australian Ballet}